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George Orwell |
We
have a lot of technology and download news to report this week:
a new version of Acrobat, iTunes bugs, a Toshiba
battery recall, a new, cured, wikipedia called
Citizendium, vector graphic malware, and Microsoft
Soapbox. David is on hiatus this week,
vacationing in Colorado. Haydn's Teaching with
Technology segment is titled "Is Online Teaching for
Me?" My tech-talk-topic will be "Using
Audio in PowerPoint." The gizmo this week has
to do with a distinctly Orwellian development in
good old England.
Palomar Tech and Download News
- A
new version of Adobe Acrobat, version 8, was
announced this week. The emphasis is on
collaboration and data collection into PDF
documents, and works with a yet unrevealed
product (coming soon) called
Acrobat Connect (price and delivery date
unannounced). The street price on Acrobat
8 pro is $449. A series of video and audio
presentations about the new product can be found
here. A CNet article on the web
conferencing aspects of the new Acrobat is
here.
- The
Flash player 9 is also now available for
download, along with developer tools called
The Flash Player Detection Kit.
- Adobe has a new web site called
PodTech.network which presents all the
latest from Adobe in either a video or audio
segment with subscription opportunities to some,
but not all, of the features.
-
Bug reports in the new Apple iTunes 7 are
much exaggerated. The knee jerk response
of Apple haters is to rush to press with
supposed bugs, but they are few, as far as we
can tell. Some people report podcasts
which cause the iPod to reboot, but they seem to
be very obscure. The only bug I have
personally observed is a miscalculation (skip)
in the gapless playback on one of the tracks on
Abbey Road--that's pretty specific, and hey,
it's still better than the gap that was there
before. Oh yeah, and it is significantly
slower to respond than iTunes 6, and 6 was no
speed demon, but hey, that's just software.
The following have published accounts of bugs:
- We reported just
last week that iTunes began selling
downloadable movies from Disney. So, how
did they do? In the first week, they sold
over 125,000 movie downloads. New ones
went for $14.99, library movies for 9.99.
- Despite
early denials,
Toshiba has joined Dell and Apple in a massive
battery recall. For specific information
and to find out if your batteries may be
affected, use one of the following resources:
Panasonic also recalled 6000 laptops with
Sony batteries, but for a defect unrelated
to the battery failure issues experienced
with the companies above. The
Panasonic batteries were on laptops sold
only in Japan in April and May of 2005.
Can HP and Lenovo be far behind?
-
Larry
Sanger, founder of Wikipedia (his
wiki article), has announced the creation of
a new, reformed wikipedia called the
Citizendium.
Click here to read the short version of the
announcement, along with its succinct criticisms
of the current wikipedia model (inconsistent
enforcement of rules, the anonymous troublemaker
problem, insular leadership, exclusion of many
academics) and the plan to create the new,
reformed model.
-
We were not successful in delivering the tech
news without mentioning Microsoft, alas.
It was announced yesterday by
Sunbelt Software that a flaw in the way
Internet Explorer handles vector graphics allows
malicious web sites to take control of the
computer and install whatever. This has
actually happened, and the whatever was so much
spyware that the computer became unusable.
This was reported by the BBC under the headline
"Browser
flaw seen on porn sites," suggesting that
these are the sorts of sites that load the
malware.
Microsoft has said (Security Bulletin
925568) a fix will be released with their
October second Tuesday security update (Oct.
10), or "...earlier if the situation warrants
it." Most interestingly, the security
bulletin referenced above said, "If you are a
Windows Live OneCare user and your current
status is green, you are already protected from
known malware that uses this vulnerability to
attempt to attack systems." So...if you
are a Microsoft antivirus customer, you're OK,
if not, you'll have to take your chances until
October 10. Wow.
-
Ok, and speaking of Microsoft, they announced
this week they are launching a YouTube/Google/Yahoo/MySpace
do-it-yourself video upload site called
Soapbox.
The operation is in Beta now, by
invitation, and the invitation list is full.
If you want to be informed when there are
openings, leave your email
here. Think they're just a little
late?
Training Opportunities
- Academic Technology Training
- Microsoft webcasts of interest coming up
next week:
- Adobe is offering several Acrobat 8 webinars
coming up in September and October.
Click here to register.
- CCC Confer would like to invite you to join
an informative brown bag lunchtime presentation
providing an overview of Cerro Coso's successful Online Teaching Certificate
Program. The presenter is Matt Hightower,
Director of Cerro Coso's Online Program, and it will
be held Thursday, October 5 at noon.
Click here to register,
here for more information.
Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray
Dave is on vacation this week and will not have a
segment.
See
the index of Dave's previous "Blackboard Feature
of the Week" segments.
Note: To get to David's vodcast site,
click here.
Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis
Haydn's topic is "Is Online Teaching for Me?"
He takes on three general topics:
- Is Online Teaching For
Me?
- Teaching Online – How
Much Time Does It Take?
- What is one (almost)
sure-fire way to improve faculty
satisfaction with teaching online?
Resources:
Podcast Notes for September 22 [PDF - 22K]
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
17:43]
See
an index of previous "Teaching with
Technology" segments.
Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray
PowerPoint Audio Questions
I have received a number of questions lately
related to playing audio in PowerPoint, and
would like to address them here.
How to play a sound file for several (or
all) slides
A frequent question I get is: How do I make a
sound file play all the way through my
presentation? Generally this one has to do
with adding background music to a presentation.
Of course, you can use a CD and tell
PowerPoint to loop the track continuously, as
this demonstration from Microsoft explains,
but we do not recommend using a CD for several
reasons:
- You have to remember to bring the CD
with you to the presentation;
- The computer you use for the
presentation may be a strange one, and it
may not have a CD drive, or it may be a
laptop with the extra battery mounted in the
CD drive slot;
- CDs are easily scratched and may skip
during the presentation.
A better solution is to insert a sound file
using the Insert > Movies and Sounds > Sound
from File... option. Set it to play
Automatically. (You will be given this
choice when you insert it).
A speaker icon will appear centered on your
slide. Right-click it, choose "Edit Sound
Object," and set it to "Loop until stopped."
(Note that you can set the Sound volume
(relative to other sounds in the presentation)
and Hide the speaker icon here too--(the speaker
icon will hide during presentation, but not in
Normal View in edit mode). Click OK.
Now, right-click the speaker icon again and
this time choose "Custom Animation." The
Custom Animation task pane will open. If
you have other animations on this slide, you
will see your sound animation below them.
If you want the sound to play as soon as the
slide displays, move it to the top of the list
by dragging it. Click the drop-down on the
animation indicator and choose "Effect
Options..."
On the Play Sound dialog that appears, in the
"Stop playing" area, select the "After:" radio
button and enter "999" in the slides box.
Click OK.
That's it. You have set the sound file
to loop continuously AND to play until after the
last possible slide (assuming you have less than
999 slides).
How do I get a sound file off a CD?
Rip the CD using the Windows media player or
iTunes. Before you rip with iTunes, set
the file type to mp3, rather than the default
AAC format iTunes will want to use.
Windows media player will rip in wma format,
which will work fine in PowerPoint. If you
want, however, you can set the Windows media
player to rip in mp3 format too. I
recommend wma for PowerPoint.
Once you have ripped the file, simply copy it
from your music library (usually the My Music
folder if you are using Windows media player) or
whatever library location you have set for your
iTunes music. Copy it to the SAME folder
in which you are creating (or are about to
create) your PowerPoint presentation. For
reasons of portability (explained below) do not
use the original file from its original
location.
Insert the sound file as described above.
What if I have the sound file as a wav
file? Do I need to convert it to mp3 or
wma format?
No. Wav format files will work fine,
but they will be MUCH larger than a compressed
format, such as mp3 or wma. We recommend
converting the file. There are several
ways to convert wav to mp3 files, but the
easiest (and safest and cheapest) is to use
Audacity, a free open source program.
Load the wav file and export it as mp3.
The easiest way to create a wma file from a wav
original is to us the free
Windows media encoder to convert it.
What other sound file formats are
supported by PowerPoint?
AIFF, AIF, AIFC (audio interchange format)
AU, SND (Unix sound files)
MP3 and M3U (mpedg-1 audio layer 3 files)
MID, MIDI (musical instrument digital
interface - the only non-waveform files
supported by PowerPoint).
Will the sound file be embedded in my
PowerPoint presentation when I save it?
Only if it is a wav file and only if it is
smaller than the PowerPoint default-to-embed
limit, which is set in Tools > Options on the
General tab:
To save larger wav files embedded, rather
than linked, set the 100 Kb default to a much
higher number.
When I play my PowerPoint on my desk
computer all the sound files play fine.
When I take it to the classroom on a CD, and
play it on the classroom computer, only some of
the sound files play, not all. What is
going on?
See the item above. If a sound file is
not a wav file, or if it is a wav file larger
than your "Link sounds with file size greater
than" limit, it will not be embedded in your PPT
or PPS file. It will be linked, meaning
that PowerPoint will save a path to it where it
can find it and play it.
If some sounds play and others do not, it is
because the ones that play were small and
therefore embedded in the PPT file, the others
are back on your hard drive and PowerPoint can't
get to them from the classroom.
Remember, non-wav files will never be
embedded in the PPT file.
To solve this problem, assemble all your
audio files in the SAME folder where you create
your presentation and link to them from there,
as you create your presentation. Then,
when you copy your presentation to CD or flash
drive to take it to the classroom, copy the
entire folder containing the presentation and
all its sound files. The path PowerPoint
uses to the files will be relative to the same
folder as the presentation and it will always
find and play them.
If you have created a presentation with these
widely dispersed audio links, you will have to
recreate it with the links to the files in the
same folder. There is no easy way to fix
this. PowerPoint won't let you adjust the
link internally.
When I record an audio in PowerPoint using
the record or narration tool, what kind of sound
files are created?
Wav files. These will be much larger
than they need to be. Rather than using
the recorder tool in PowerPoint (Insert > Movies
and Sounds > Record Sound), we recommend
recording using an external device, such as the
WS-100 digital audio recorder that can be
checked out from Academic Technology, or a
microphone hooked directly to your computer's
sound card and using the Windows media encoder
to make the recording. The result will be
a wma file that you can then insert following
the technique described above.
If you want a narrated PowerPoint
presentation, especially for presentation on the
web, we recommend using
Microsoft Producer, rather than the
narration tool built-in to PowerPoint. The
narration tool creates large, ungainly wav files
that load very slowly if placed on the web, or
even when presented in person or kiosk mode.
Producer creates small, wma format files that
load and play much more quickly.
Resources:
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
14:34]
Gizmo of the week / Campaign 06
Big
Brother is Shouting. "Attention
Citizens! All citizens should be off the
streets for the midnight curfew." You may hear
this soon from an intersection near you. It
was not by accident the author of 1984 was an
Englishman and the Oceania of 1984 is unmistakably
English. The UK has now begun adding audio
capabilities to "... the more than 4 million1
video surveillance cameras blanketing The Kingdom,
seven of the 158 CCTV cams in the Northern town of
Middlesbrough have been fitted with loudspeakers. Do
something "anti-social" and prepare for an earful of
reprimand from the camera operators." When
warned by the voices: "'Most people are so ashamed
and embarrassed at being caught they quickly slink
off without further trouble," according to the
article in the
Daily News. When asked about issues of
civil liberty, the police respond with "'Put it this
way, we never have requests to remove them."
Granted, all-pervasive surveillance like this may
make it easier to capture terrorists, as in the
recent UK bust of the would-be airline bombers
(though whether the cameras played a role or not is
clear), but at some point this sort of invasion of
personal privacy must be considered excessive--and
one camera per four households is far beyond that
point.
Citing the civil cowardice of the herd of ordinary
citizens is never a justification for employment of
an invasive, controlling technology in overturning
the rights to privacy of the individual. If we
think the fourth amendment would protect us from
this in the US, think again. Our rights under
the fourth amendment have been eroding steadily for
the last several decades until they are no better
than theoretical at present.
It seems that Europeans are easily herded and can be
intimidated by technology like this. How else
could a handful of communists have kept captive most
of the tens of millions in the eastern block for so
many decades? In the US, the main thing we
have going for us is not our constitution, but our
tradition of individual privacy, rowdy-ism, and
civil disobedience. The very thing the cameras
and loud speakers are intended to curb.
One comment on the Daily News site was "I don't
think this would work in Atlanta. Nobody cares. They
would steal the cameras." I hope so, but they
look kind of hard to steal. It would be better to
shoot them out or paint their lenses black.
And while we're at it, hack the system and berate
the observers for good measure.
When governments start making statements like 'the
only way to maintain peace is through war' (sound
anything like the justification for the war on
terror? = war is peace); or 'individual freedom is too dangerous to
the freedom of the group,' ( = freedom is slavery) or 'it is only through
the unquestioning pursuit of anti-democratic practices that
democracy can prevail' (= ignorance is strength) that they have bought
the government's doublespeak and assume you have
bought it too. Internal surveillance, of course, is the
prolog to subservience.
Now, about those IR ports on your TV sets, and, oh
yeah, what about the precogs?...
1 Note:
According to
slashdot, "In January 2004 there were more than
4,285,000 CCTV cameras in the UK (roughly 1 for
every 4 households). No data about the number of
CCTV cameras now in use in the UK is available."
(Source:
The Daily Mail and
Engadget)
Music
The
music for today's show was provided by
Magnatune.com,
and is used through their Creative Commons license
for podcasts. Today's album was
"Mutandina"
by
Mutandina, a band described as "Funk Jazz Slasa
Rock from Agentina."
From the band promo site: "Mutandina
means mixing, "mestizaje". Mutandina mixes styles to
create a musical result that is different and
personal, where influences as jazz, salsa, funk,
rock, pop, Brazilian and Latin American music can be
found." Hard to miss with a combo like that.
We used tracks 7: "La Casita Del Amor;" 1: "Juego;"
10: "Llevala;" 6: "Dicen;" 12: "Yendote a Buscar;"
5: "Eso;" 13: "Jaus of Love."
Visit
magnatune and reward them for their generosity,
and if you like this album, buy it. Magnatune is not evil!
"I like long
walks, especially when they are taken by people
who annoy me." ~ Noel Coward
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